Page 148 of Rhodes

“See?” Nash points at Deuce. “This is why I didn't miss him.”

Rhodes pulls an empty chair from the table beside ours and turns it around before sitting on it backward at the end.

I toss back the last of the mostly melted ice now.

The conversation slides around me for a few minutes. Rhodes asks Nash about his internship, and Deuce tells him about Nashville. Jo gets dragged into explaining why she spends every weekend on I-10 now, which Rhodes finds funnier than she does.

Jo catches my eye once, and I give her the smallest nod.

I'm okay. I actually am.

I also don't want to spend another hour finding out how easy it might be to slide back into the friendship we had before we crossed a line we couldn't uncross. It's late, my early lab is tomorrow, and Charleston suddenly sounds very far away.

Jo checks her phone.

“Oh, shit.”

Deuce groans. “What now?”

“I really do have to go home and pack.” Jo slides out of the booth.

I reach for my purse. “Same. I need to be packed before my lab.”

Deuce frowns at me. “You said you were already packed.”

“I haven't loaded my truck. I'd rather not do that at six-thirty in the morning. Plus, it's almost midnight. I have an eleven-hour drive after lab.”

“Shit. You should have been in bed by eight, then.”

“Thank you for your concern.”

Jo is already pulling on her coat, saving me from having to explain anything else. Nash stands to let us out. “Safe drive tomorrow.”

“You too.”

I hug Deuce, then Nash. Jo does the same, adding a threat to Deuce about texting her if he finds out anything about some professor I stopped listening to twenty minutes ago.

Then there is Rhodes. He stands up with everyone else. For a second I don't know whether we're people who hug or shake hands or what.

Apparently, neither does he. So we don't do anything.

“Have a good Christmas, Tallulah.”

“You, too.”

Outside, the cold hits my face hard enough to make my eyes water. Jo waits until the door shuts behind us.

“You okay?”

“Actually, that was better than I thought it might be. I'm thinking a couple more of those, and we are totally fine.”

She hooks her arm through mine as we start toward the street.

We decided to do Christmas morning at Dad's house and then all of us out here through New Year’s. There’s something really special that the first day of the year starts on this water. We’re all here and relaxing almost like old times. It's much less solemn than Easter was.

Grandbank is inside arguing with Cooper over football. Dad left an hour ago to take Libba home because she has somewhere to be tonight. She begged me to come, but I told her I just want to be here with the water and Mom and everything this day of the new year represents.

She didn't like it, but she understands.